


In the Best Way, You'll Be the Death of Me: a list of reasons why

by saltfromthesea



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: M/M, Minor Angst, One Shot, Post-Book: Carry On, all fluff no plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 09:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5491442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltfromthesea/pseuds/saltfromthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Variations on a theme: a small collection of SnowBaz drabbles</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Best Way, You'll Be the Death of Me: a list of reasons why

-1- 

_Simon_

The first time I kissed him—out there, in the forest, surrounded by fire and full of it, too—the first time I realized I _wanted_ to kiss him, the first time I realized I had a list in my head of everything I wanted to do to him, _with_ him…

You would think the point of a list would be to check things off. To move down the page. Done that, finished that, making your way to the end. But this one doesn’t work like that. Every one action has another twenty behind it, a list of infinite little moments, infinite possibilities.

Well, I always was good at math.

 

-2-

_Baz_

I don’t make lists.

Used to be, he was the most unattainable thing out there, wilder than my wildest dreams, and there was no point in holding on to anything, no point in any kind of yearning—any mark on a list would have just been another reminder of something I could never ever have. 

What? I never said I wasn’t dramatic.

 

-3-

_Simon_

Hands, too. I’m also good with my hands.

 

-4-

 

_Baz_

In all fairness, to, you know, me, there’s actually no need for me to keep a list. Not if Simon has one. He acts, I react. That’s how it’s always been with us—push, push back. He reaches out, and I lean in. He leads and I follow—always in that order, like on some level I still don’t believe it. Almost always.

I guess there was that one time.

Crowley, though, I don’t want to tell that story. It’s embarrassing. It makes me blush.

Or, you know, it would. If I blushed.

Which I do not.

 

-5-

_Simon_

My hands in his hair. My mouth on his collarbone. My fingers in his belt loops (Jeans are a good look for him. I’m just saying). His jawline and the small of his back and that look he gets when someone surprises him into a laugh. Lips and hands and teeth and eyelashes.

Sometimes I can’t believe there was ever a time when I didn’t think about these things.

And smaller things than that, too. The way he hums to himself when he thinks I’m not paying attention—always perfectly on pitch, of course, after all those hours of playing the violin, and it would probably be annoying if I wasn’t so charmed (“Give it a year,” he says whenever I mention it, “you’ll probably want to set that violin on fire if you hear it one more time.”). The way he’ll yawn like a kitten and doze off against my shoulder sometimes, his hair flopping into his eyes, looking more unkempt than he ever does when he’s awake. The way he’ll close his long fingers around my wrist, the pad of his thumb pressing into my pulse. The way he’ll hook his little finger around mine when we’re walking—he thinks I make the first move always, and maybe I do, but only the big ones. He’s much more a master of detail than I’ll ever be.  

I don’t even know what I’m listing anymore—things I want to do with him, or the things he does to me.

  

-6-

_Baz_

All right, fine. 

So it was the night of the Leaver’s Ball. After everything. After we danced terribly, after Snow kissed me in front of everyone. After I chose him and he chose me and we went to the kitchen to ask Cook for sandwiches and I ate half of one and he ate six, because of course.

After all that, I thought he’d call Penny and have her pick him up and take him back to her house where he was supposed to be recovering. But instead he said he wanted to stay.

“It’s my room,” he said, shrugging. “It was the only place that was mine for a long time. It’s _our_ room. I just…I don’t want to leave it without a proper goodbye, you know?”

I did know. I wasn’t quite as attached to it as he was, but I did know.

We walked up together in silence, both of us deep in thought, though if I had to guess, I’d say we were thinking about very different things. For my part, I was thinking about how odd this was—us going to our room _together_ , side by side like this. After all those years when we did our comings and goings separately, playing out that carefully choreographed dance of avoidance, winding around each other like magnets—attracting and repelling and attracting again.

But this time, I opened the door. And he walked in. And I followed.

For a moment, he just stood there, his shoulders slumped, grief etching itself onto his face, the loss so thick around him I could practically _smell_ it. 

“Snow?” I said, tentatively, because let’s be honest it’s not like I have ever really known what I’m doing here. “Simon. Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment—long enough that I wondered if I’d even asked out loud—but then he turned, and smiled. It was barely a smile, more like the ghost of one, and then he came toward me, cupped the back of my neck in his hand, and leaned his forehead against mine, closing his eyes. Just for a moment and then he was gone, disappearing into the bathroom.

I’m sorry to say that even that one small moment left me weak in the knees. Seriously. I had to sort of wobble over to my bed to put my pajamas on. Humiliating.

By the time I finished brushing my teeth, Snow was already in bed, facing the wall, his back to me. Shirtless, like always, which was like, the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, although I guess now he at least had an excuse—it’s got to be a pain to get a shirt over those ridiculous wings. Even so, I couldn’t quite forgive him. The torment of it, and all that.

I didn’t say anything, just slid into my own bed and turned off the light. Like old times indeed.

Look, you don’t share a room with someone for eight years without hearing them cry at least once. Mostly in our first couple of years, when we were young and emotional. It’s not like Snow sat around crying all the time, but I’d definitely heard him snuffling into his pillow on several occasions (Like any self-respecting man, I save _my_ crying for the shower). But this time it was different.

I don’t know if I’d really fallen asleep at all or if I was just drifting, but then I heard him inhale shakily and sob, just once, a harsh sound cut off immediately by a pillow or a fist, and I was up in a flash and halfway across the floor before I thought better of it, standing between our beds, not sure if I should go backwards or forwards.

But I could see him through the dark. He was curled around himself, his shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to be still, and I didn’t know what he wanted me to do. If it was me, I thought, I’d want to be left alone, pride intact, brush it under the rug and pretend it never happened. I think.

But I’m not Simon Snow.

I took another hesitant step forward and reached out a hand, laying two fingers on the curve of his shoulder. He jumped—I guess he hadn’t realized I was awake—and then went absolutely still beneath my hand.

I still didn’t know what to do. I thought about waiting a minute and then retreating, like maybe it was just enough to let him know I was there, maybe he didn’t want any more from me than that. But then, without turning towards me, he reached back and grabbed the hem of my shirt— _I’m_ not a heathen, I sleep fully clothed—and tugged me towards him.

I realized, suddenly, that I’d slept in his arms before, but he’d never slept in mine. And then I stopped thinking.

Gingerly, I crawled in beside him. Those damn wings get in the way of everything, even at times like that, when he wasn’t moving a muscle. But I figured it out—with my face level with the top of his spine, I could fit sort of in between them. Like that. My forehead bumping into the base of his neck. My knees nudging into his calves. As close as I’d ever been to another person.

I brushed my lips against his shoulder blade. Slid my arm around his waist, bending it at the elbow so my fingertips grazed his chest. I felt his heart thud into my palm. He sighed, once, his breath smooth now, not broken by tears, and shifted just slightly towards me, pressing the length of his body against mine. And then, finally, we both slept.

 

-7-

_Simon_

Baz cries in his sleep sometimes. Only sometimes, not very often

I forget, sometimes, that he really was kidnapped, that he really was locked in a coffin for months, that he nearly starved, that he easily could have lost it. Honestly, I think he forgets it sometimes too—most of the time when he brings it up, it’s like a punch line. Me, too. Penny and I have picked it up from Fiona—every time he calls shotgun, we’ll scream “FRONT SEAT’S FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T BEEN KIDNAPPED BY FUCKING NUMPTIES!” until all three of us are in hysterics and then usually, somehow, he gets shotgun anyway and I end up sitting in the backseat. They both say it’s because I always fall asleep in cars and don’t make good front-seat company. Hmph.

But despite that, I think the numpties still haunt him at night. That memory of being buried alive. Or the memory of what happened to his mother. There’s a lot in his past that I think would haunt anyone.

I asked him once, and he said it was all of those and one more—that time he and Penny found me and the Mage in the tower, and for a second, he says, he thought I was dead and it was the longest second of his life.

I don’t know if that should make me feel flattered or sad. I think both.

 

-8-

_Simon and Baz_

“Baz, wake up. Wake up.”

“…Simon?”

“Hi. Hey. Here.”

“Simon. Hey. Okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m okay, I’m okay. Are _you_?”

“I’m…what?”

“Baz. You’re shaking.”

“Oh.”

“C’mere.”

“Okay.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I—no. I just want to forget about it.”

“Okay.”

“It’s the same as it always is, you know?”

“I know. It’s not true.”

“It’s not true.”

“You’re okay.”

“We’re okay.”

“…”

“…”

“Baz?”

“Hm?”

“Can you see in the dark?”

“Yeah. A little bit. Like a cat, not like an owl.”

“What’s that thing that bats do? Echo…”

“Echolocation.”

“Yeah. Can you do that?”

“…”

“…”

“No, you idiot. I can’t _echolocate._ ”

“How do you _know_ , though? I mean, have you ever actually tried?”

“Oh, for the love of…Crowley, Snow, I’m not trying that.”

“Come on, just once? I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“Simon.”

“Baz.”

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Snow. Stop talking.”

“I think…you’re going to have to make me.”

“…”

“…”

“Like this?”

“…”

“…”

“Yeah. Like this.”


End file.
